ROM 1
1
Paul’s Apostolic Calling
1 Paul, a bondservant wholly devoted to Christ Jesus, writing with the authority of one directly commissioned by Christ as an apostle, specially assigned by God to proclaim the good news of salvation.
2 This gospel is the fulfilment of what God had promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
3 At its centre is God’s own Son, who, with respect to His human existence, entered history as a genuine descendant of David.
4 Yet with respect to His exalted status, He was powerfully demonstrated and publicly vindicated as the Son of God by the Spirit of holiness through His resurrection from the dead—Jesus Christ our Lord.
5 Through Him, God has graciously given us both the undeserved favour of salvation and the commission of apostleship, so that people from every ethnic group and nation might come to the obedience that genuine faith produces—all to bring honour and glory to His name.
6 Included among those nations are the believers in Rome, who themselves have been called by God to belong to Jesus Christ.
7 To all of you in Rome who are dearly loved by God the Father and called out from the world to be His holy people set apart for Him:
May you continually experience the grace and peace that flow from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul’s Thanksgiving and Desire to Visit Rome
8 First and foremost, I give thanks to my God—approaching Him through the mediation of Jesus Christ—for every one of you, because the report of your genuine faith in Christ is being talked about and celebrated throughout the world.
9 God Himself, whom I serve with my whole inner being as I proclaim the gospel about His Son, is my witness to this truth: I continually remember you and bring you before Him in prayer.
10 In these prayers, I persistently ask God that somehow, if it aligns with His sovereign purposes and timing, I might finally succeed in making the journey to visit you.
11 For I have a deep, earnest longing to see you face to face, so that I may share with you some spiritual benefit—strength, encouragement, and grace from the Spirit—in order that you might be established more firmly in your faith.
12 That is to say, when we are together, we will be mutually strengthened and encouraged by one another’s faith—yours encouraging mine, and mine encouraging yours.
13 Brothers and sisters, I want you to understand clearly that I have planned many times to come to you, but up to now have been prevented by various circumstances. My desire has been to see some spiritual fruit and gospel results among you, just as God has graciously blessed my ministry among all the other Gentile peoples.
14 I have a solemn obligation to all people—whether they are cultured Greeks or so-called barbarians, whether they are educated philosophers or unlearned common folk—for God has commissioned me as the apostle to the Gentiles.
15 This is why I am eager and ready, as far as it depends on me, to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome as well.
The Power of the Gospel
16 For I am not ashamed or embarrassed to proclaim the gospel of Christ, because it is not mere human philosophy or religious instruction—it is the very power of God actively at work to bring salvation to every person who places his trust in Christ. This salvation comes to the Jewish people first, and also to the Gentiles.
17 For in this gospel, God's righteousness—His way of declaring sinners righteous through faith in Christ—is being revealed and offered. This righteousness comes from faith from start to finish, received entirely by faith and lived out by faith. This confirms what the Scripture declares: "The person who is righteous in God's sight will live by faith."*
The Revelation of God's Wrath
18 For God's holy wrath is revealed from heaven against every form of ungodliness in worship and unrighteousness in conduct that characterises fallen humanity—people who actively suppress and hold down the truth about God through their rebellious and unrighteous living.
19 They suppress this truth even though what can be known about God's existence and nature is evident within their own consciousness, for God Himself has made this knowledge plain and accessible to all humanity.
20 For ever since God created the world, His invisible qualities—specifically His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly visible and understood by human reason through observing the created order, so that all people are left without any legitimate excuse for rejecting Him.
21 For although humanity had true knowledge of God through creation, they refused to honour Him as the supreme God or express gratitude to Him as their Creator. Instead, they became futile and empty in their speculations and philosophies, and their foolish, unreasoning hearts were plunged into spiritual darkness.
22 While claiming to be wise philosophers and enlightened thinkers, they actually became fools in their rejection of God.
23 And they exchanged the glory and worship due to the immortal, eternal God for mere idols—images fashioned to look like mortal human beings, birds, four-footed animals, and even crawling reptiles—descending into increasingly degrading forms of false worship.
24 Therefore, as a judicial act of judgment, God handed them over to follow the sinful cravings of their own hearts, allowing them to pursue moral impurity and sexual immorality, resulting in the degrading and dishonouring of their own bodies in their relations with one another.
25 These are people who deliberately exchanged God's truth for a lie, and chose to worship and serve the created things—whether nature, human beings, or idols—rather than worshipping the Creator Himself, who alone is worthy of eternal praise and blessing. Amen.
26 For this reason—because of their idolatry and rejection of God—God gave them over as a further stage of judgment to disgraceful and dishonourable passions that violate His created design. For even their women abandoned the natural sexual relations that God ordained and instead engaged in sexual relations that are contrary to nature and God's design.
27 And in the same way, the men also abandoned natural sexual relations with women and were consumed with lustful passion for one another. Males engaged in shameful sexual acts with other males, deliberately committing indecent and degrading behaviour, and receiving in their own persons the due consequences and penalty that their rebellion against God's created order demanded.
28 And just as they considered it worthless to retain the true knowledge of God in their minds and deliberately chose to reject Him, God judicially gave them over to a morally worthless and depraved mind, unfit to make right judgments, so that they do things that are utterly inappropriate and contrary to God's will.
29 Their lives became filled and saturated with every kind of unrighteousness and injustice, wickedness and depravity, greed and insatiable desire for more, malicious evil intent. They are completely full of envy towards others, murderous hatred, quarrelsome strife, deceitful manipulation, and malicious spite. They have become gossips who spread rumours,
30 slanderers who destroy reputations, God-haters who are hostile to their Creator, insolent and arrogant in their treatment of others, boastful about themselves, inventors of new forms of evil, and rebelliously disobedient to their parents.
31 They are without moral understanding or discernment, untrustworthy in keeping their word, lacking in natural affection and family loyalty, and completely without mercy or compassion towards others.
32 Although they fully understand God's righteous judgment and decree—that those who habitually practise such things deserve death as the just penalty for sin—they not only continue to do these very things themselves, but they also enthusiastically approve of and celebrate others who practise them, thereby compounding their guilt.
Notes
17 Quoted from Hab. 2:4
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Copyright © 2026 Michael Adeyemi Adegbola. This Scripture text is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
ROM 1
1
Paul’s Apostolic Calling
1 Paul, a bondservant wholly devoted to Christ Jesus, writing with the authority of one directly commissioned by Christ as an apostle, specially assigned by God to proclaim the good news of salvation.
2 This gospel is the fulfilment of what God had promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
3 At its centre is God’s own Son, who, with respect to His human existence, entered history as a genuine descendant of David.
4 Yet with respect to His exalted status, He was powerfully demonstrated and publicly vindicated as the Son of God by the Spirit of holiness through His resurrection from the dead—Jesus Christ our Lord.
5 Through Him, God has graciously given us both the undeserved favour of salvation and the commission of apostleship, so that people from every ethnic group and nation might come to the obedience that genuine faith produces—all to bring honour and glory to His name.
6 Included among those nations are the believers in Rome, who themselves have been called by God to belong to Jesus Christ.
7 To all of you in Rome who are dearly loved by God the Father and called out from the world to be His holy people set apart for Him:
May you continually experience the grace and peace that flow from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul’s Thanksgiving and Desire to Visit Rome
8 First and foremost, I give thanks to my God—approaching Him through the mediation of Jesus Christ—for every one of you, because the report of your genuine faith in Christ is being talked about and celebrated throughout the world.
9 God Himself, whom I serve with my whole inner being as I proclaim the gospel about His Son, is my witness to this truth: I continually remember you and bring you before Him in prayer.
10 In these prayers, I persistently ask God that somehow, if it aligns with His sovereign purposes and timing, I might finally succeed in making the journey to visit you.
11 For I have a deep, earnest longing to see you face to face, so that I may share with you some spiritual benefit—strength, encouragement, and grace from the Spirit—in order that you might be established more firmly in your faith.
12 That is to say, when we are together, we will be mutually strengthened and encouraged by one another’s faith—yours encouraging mine, and mine encouraging yours.
13 Brothers and sisters, I want you to understand clearly that I have planned many times to come to you, but up to now have been prevented by various circumstances. My desire has been to see some spiritual fruit and gospel results among you, just as God has graciously blessed my ministry among all the other Gentile peoples.
14 I have a solemn obligation to all people—whether they are cultured Greeks or so-called barbarians, whether they are educated philosophers or unlearned common folk—for God has commissioned me as the apostle to the Gentiles.
15 This is why I am eager and ready, as far as it depends on me, to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome as well.
The Power of the Gospel
16 For I am not ashamed or embarrassed to proclaim the gospel of Christ, because it is not mere human philosophy or religious instruction—it is the very power of God actively at work to bring salvation to every person who places his trust in Christ. This salvation comes to the Jewish people first, and also to the Gentiles.
17 For in this gospel, God's righteousness—His way of declaring sinners righteous through faith in Christ—is being revealed and offered. This righteousness comes from faith from start to finish, received entirely by faith and lived out by faith. This confirms what the Scripture declares: "The person who is righteous in God's sight will live by faith."*
The Revelation of God's Wrath
18 For God's holy wrath is revealed from heaven against every form of ungodliness in worship and unrighteousness in conduct that characterises fallen humanity—people who actively suppress and hold down the truth about God through their rebellious and unrighteous living.
19 They suppress this truth even though what can be known about God's existence and nature is evident within their own consciousness, for God Himself has made this knowledge plain and accessible to all humanity.
20 For ever since God created the world, His invisible qualities—specifically His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly visible and understood by human reason through observing the created order, so that all people are left without any legitimate excuse for rejecting Him.
21 For although humanity had true knowledge of God through creation, they refused to honour Him as the supreme God or express gratitude to Him as their Creator. Instead, they became futile and empty in their speculations and philosophies, and their foolish, unreasoning hearts were plunged into spiritual darkness.
22 While claiming to be wise philosophers and enlightened thinkers, they actually became fools in their rejection of God.
23 And they exchanged the glory and worship due to the immortal, eternal God for mere idols—images fashioned to look like mortal human beings, birds, four-footed animals, and even crawling reptiles—descending into increasingly degrading forms of false worship.
24 Therefore, as a judicial act of judgment, God handed them over to follow the sinful cravings of their own hearts, allowing them to pursue moral impurity and sexual immorality, resulting in the degrading and dishonouring of their own bodies in their relations with one another.
25 These are people who deliberately exchanged God's truth for a lie, and chose to worship and serve the created things—whether nature, human beings, or idols—rather than worshipping the Creator Himself, who alone is worthy of eternal praise and blessing. Amen.
26 For this reason—because of their idolatry and rejection of God—God gave them over as a further stage of judgment to disgraceful and dishonourable passions that violate His created design. For even their women abandoned the natural sexual relations that God ordained and instead engaged in sexual relations that are contrary to nature and God's design.
27 And in the same way, the men also abandoned natural sexual relations with women and were consumed with lustful passion for one another. Males engaged in shameful sexual acts with other males, deliberately committing indecent and degrading behaviour, and receiving in their own persons the due consequences and penalty that their rebellion against God's created order demanded.
28 And just as they considered it worthless to retain the true knowledge of God in their minds and deliberately chose to reject Him, God judicially gave them over to a morally worthless and depraved mind, unfit to make right judgments, so that they do things that are utterly inappropriate and contrary to God's will.
29 Their lives became filled and saturated with every kind of unrighteousness and injustice, wickedness and depravity, greed and insatiable desire for more, malicious evil intent. They are completely full of envy towards others, murderous hatred, quarrelsome strife, deceitful manipulation, and malicious spite. They have become gossips who spread rumours,
30 slanderers who destroy reputations, God-haters who are hostile to their Creator, insolent and arrogant in their treatment of others, boastful about themselves, inventors of new forms of evil, and rebelliously disobedient to their parents.
31 They are without moral understanding or discernment, untrustworthy in keeping their word, lacking in natural affection and family loyalty, and completely without mercy or compassion towards others.
32 Although they fully understand God's righteous judgment and decree—that those who habitually practise such things deserve death as the just penalty for sin—they not only continue to do these very things themselves, but they also enthusiastically approve of and celebrate others who practise them, thereby compounding their guilt.
Notes
17 Quoted from Hab. 2:4
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Copyright © 2026 Michael Adeyemi Adegbola. This Scripture text is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).